15 November 2012 5:01 PM

This marvellous moralist is the corrective to claptrap

The most rewarding aspect of writing for the Daily Mail is the extraordinary people I get to meet. Few, however, have managed to astonish me more than the reader who recently burst into my life.

It was late one afternoon when I received an email from a Mr NM Gwynne. As I like to respond to readers promptly, I opened it to find a request for a copy of a column I published last year on the virtues of hand writing. It transpired that Mr Gwynne was writing a book and wished to cite my article.

Now, many people write to inform me of their book projects, but this was different. Nevile Gwynne had been commissioned by one of the world’s most prestigious publishers to produce a book on English grammar. By the time he contacted me, the text was almost ready for the press.

It soon became clear that Mr Gwynne was no amateur. His new work is based on a booklet, Gwynne’s Grammar, which he recently showcased in a series of lectures at Selfridges department store in London. These two-hour sessions in the store’s Ultralounge were a sensation.

It is now 25 years since Nevile Gwynne moved from England to live in Co. Wexford. He did so because he yearned to dwell where the social and cultural atmosphere of his youth still endured. That was a time of order, authority and moral harmony.

And now, as he and his wife sit amid the ruins of our civilisation, Mr Gwynne has set himself the noble task of sustaining the light of learning. This is how he describes what he does: ‘Formerly a successful businessman, NM Gwynne has for many years been teaching just about every sort of subject to just about every sort of pupil in just about every sort of circumstance – English, Latin, Greek, French, German, mathematics, History, classical philosophy, natural medicine, the elements of music and how to start and run your own business’.

Nevile Gwynne is the archetypal polymath, one who recognises that knowledge is much more than a luxury. For him, it is the bedrock of our social and moral order. Dumb it down and you destroy the foundations, not only of society, but of humanity itself.

When Mr Gwynne uses the word ‘knowledge’ he does not mean ‘information’, but that capacity to delve beneath the surface in order to discover how things really function. Hence his teaching methods are, as he writes, ‘very much in accordance with the traditional common-sense ones, refined over centuries, that were used almost everywhere until they were abolished worldwide in the 1960s’. So where and how does he teach?

Remarkably, Nevile Gwynne does not hold a university chair. In fact, the only chair he uses is the one situated behind his computer. For, despite being a septuagenarian, he is a skilled practitioner of Skype, the online video communication service.

Through Skype, he has taught people from across the world, his youngest student being a two-year-old American who he schooled in Latin. Indeed, one of his boasts is that ‘I can teach people more Latin in half an hour on Skype, than the Cambridge Latin Course can manage in 18 months’. Let me tell you why I believe this is true.

As Mr Gwynne rarely leaves Wexford, he asked if we could meet on Skype. Initially, I was not keen as I don’t believe in hiding behind a screen. However, I was finally persuaded and we ‘met’ last week.

Soon after our conversation commenced, I forgot that I was speaking to Mr Gwynne through a computer. For nearly two hours, we discussed politics, education, philosophy, journalism and ethics. Without warning, I was transported back to a time when people sought to live in the glow of high ideals.

I was lucky to have been educated by such people. Like Mr Gwynne, they believed that grammar is not confined to the study of language, but underpins everything we do. As he explains, the techniques of any activity ‘must be learned as a science – often very painstakingly in the case of the most satisfying and enjoyable occupations – before the budding practitioner can expect to flourish at it’.

In an age when ‘the public has been preposterously asked to believe the basics of how to do something destroys a child’s creativity’, Nevile Gwynne stands as a stunning corrective to child-centred claptrap. Both humorous and dignified, he reminds us that the task for a true teacher is not to make knowledge relevant to students, but to ensure that students transmit knowledge to the next generation. But this is simply not possible in the absence of grammar, which is why its rejection by the educational establishment was such a crime. For how are we expected to properly express our thoughts without the ability to form complete sentences?

Gwynne’s Grammar is much more than an excellent introduction to the writing of good English. It is nothing less than a guide to the good life. Speak rightly, it insists, and you will savour the joy of ‘thinking and deciding rightly’. As such, ‘happiness depends at least partly on good grammar’.

Such is the joyful wisdom of a marvellous moralist and terrific teacher who can, I promise, transform your life in half an hour.

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Mark Dooley

Dr Mark Dooley is an Irish philosopher, author and broadcaster. From 2003-2006, he wrote a controversial column on foreign affairs for the Sunday Independent. Since 2006, he has written for the Irish Daily Mail, where his popular 'Moral Matters' column appears weekly. He has held lectureships at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and at University College Dublin where he was John Henry Newman Scholar of Theology. His 8 books include a widely-acclaimed intellectual biography of English philosopher Roger Scruton, and a robust defence of traditional Catholicism in 'Why Be a Catholic?'